Blue Shaman: Stone of Sovereignty - Tapa blanda

Who are the Shapers? What is their will of us? In the First Time it was given the Na Akhu-El Sages of the Motherland to know the way of the Otherworld, and to shape the pattern of things to come in the subtle substance of the earth. But a catastrophic dark age obscured the way of the Makers. The union of the worlds was broken, and in the destruction of the world that was knowledge of the Otherworld and of the First Time was lost. Veiled by the commonplace, a vestige of the Na Akhu-El Sages survives, and subtly intervenes at crucial moments to keep the way they have shaped to restore Man to the First Time. In ancient Egypt this remnant is known as the Akhu, the Shining Ones who serve the Lord Osiris. Knowing the secrets of life and death, the making and unmaking of things, and the way of resurrection and ascension into the Otherworld, they were worshiped as deathless gods. In thirteenth century Egypt, the alchemist Flegetanis of Alexandria confronts an ancient adversary, the shaman Morgon Kara, in a dispute over a fallen Templar who is the key to the survival of the Na Akhu-El Sages. A contest unfolds in a subtle weave of intrigue and betrayal, in a quest for the meaning of a lost way, and the resurrection of a man whose heart holds the key to the fate of the world to come.

Hugh Malafry is Fulbright and emeritus professor of mythology and world literature. He lives in Victoria, Canada.